In what Canada's big banks dismissed as little more than a display of ignorant rhetoric, Layton said the $19 billion profits the financial institutions made last year should be enough to waive ATM convenience fees.
"We believe it's gouging when a person comes up and they want $40 or $60 of their cash and a bank is charging them $1.50 or $2, $2.50," Layton said during an election-style announcement on a Toronto street corner.
"That's a rate of payment which is very, very high - and unfair."
New Democrats will bring forward proposed amendments to the Bank Act, which is currently under review, to prevent banks from charging fees to customers who withdraw, deposit or transfer their own money through bank machines, Layton said.
He estimated banks make $420 million from charging people to withdraw cash from ATMs.
"Ordinary families work hard for their money," Layton said as he braved the city's coldest temperatures so far this year to stage a news conference at an outdoor bank machine.
"If they want to take a few dollars out to go to the grocery store, the banks shouldn't be keeping $1.50 or $2 or any of that money."
Layton's comments drew scorn from the banks.
Installing and maintaining ATM networks costs millions of dollars - part of of the $4.4 billion the country's six largest banks spent on technology in 2005, according to figures from the Canadian Bankers Association.
"This is just typical NDP bank bashing and political rhetoric being made without a full understanding of the facts," Raymond Protti, president and CEO of the association, said in a statement.
"He should realize that services are not delivered for free: there is a cost to providing banking services."
The association, which speaks for 54 domestic chartered banks and foreign bank subsidiaries and branches, said customers normally pay no ATM fees if they use their own bank's machines.
Allowing clients from other financial institutions to use the machines is a convenience that a bank's own clients shouldn't have to subsidize, the group said.
Layton wasn't buying that line.
"What's convenient about paying $1.50 when you take $40 of your own money out of their bank?" Layton said.
"They should able to get access to their money without having to pay the banks to do so."
He said British banks did away with the charges six years ago under pressure from consumers, but the Canadian banks countered that the costs are simply recovered in different ways.
Two recent polls suggest popular support for the New Democrats has been bleeding to the Liberals and Green Party.
Asked if the announcement was an attempt to reconnect with "average working family, seniors (and) young people" in light of the slipping support, Layton responded with a curt, "No."
